Well, on the bright side, nobody was talking about the wide receivers dropping passes for a day.

Osi Umenyiora said he was wrong for walking out on the Giants on Monday -- and he was. He called it a "very bad moral decision on my part and an even worse financial decision" and vowed never to do it again -- and, considering his shock over the fallout, you can bank on that.

"Everyone is allowed one mistake," the defensive end told reporters. "This is my mistake."

As controversies with the Giants go, this ranks a 3.4 on the Richter Scale, enough to rattle the windows. It is much better to see Umenyiora storm out of the training complex than to have him carted off the field with a wrecked knee, which is what this team dealt with a year ago.

Still, his poor judgment takes a back-burner issue and puts it front and center for this team. Bill Sheridan already had the unenviable task of replacing a popular defensive coordinator in Steve Spagnuolo, one canonized for his role in leading this team to that Super Bowl upset.

If this defense gives up 35 points in the opener to the Redskins, if this pass rush looks as lethargic as it has at times in the preseason, Umenyiora made it very easy for people to point to the new guy in the headsets.

This is supposed to be a seamless transition, a longtime defensive assistant taking over for a coordinator who got a chance to run his own team. Now you wonder: Are the players having trouble adjusting to their new leader before they've even played a game that counts?

"Spags is not here any more," linebacker Antonio Pierce said, interrupting a question about the new Rams head coach. He might be gone, but there's little doubt he's not forgotten -- neither for the jewel-encrusted ring he helped the players earn, nor for his fiery personality and approach to the game.

Sheridan has to put his stamp on that defense now. Considering he has arguably the deepest and most talented defensive front in the league, the expectations will be nothing short of dominance.

Look, the Giants defense has been down this road before adapting to new coordinators. Pierce can rattle off seven in his nine NFL seasons with Washington and the Giants.

Change is a constant in NFL coaching staffs, especially the successful ones. There is no reason to believe that Sheridan, who has paid his dues on every level in the sport, is not ready.

"Everybody coaches different," Umenyiora said. "Spags was real high strung and Bill isn't really like that at all. Their approach is the same thing but different, if that makes sense."

Umenyiora, however unintentionally, put the question out there, and what is a minor issue now will become a big one if the defense falters. Even the beloved Spagnuolo was a target after his unit gave up 80 points in the first two games of the 2007 season. Sheridan gets no honeymoon.

Maybe this is the lesson for NFL stars going forward: Have a blowup with your coach and be advised that it will be on Twitter, eight message boards and 147 blogs before you close the door to your Escalade.

(As an aside, can you imagine if Lawrence Taylor -- who once showed up to a team meeting in handcuffs after a night out with call girls -- had played in a world with Twitter?)

"We're good about handling stuff like this," defensive end Justin Tuck said. "We have the serious part of the conversation first, and then we laugh about it. Sometimes you say some things or do some things you immediately regret. But we're men about it."

This was not a great August for the Giants. The No. 1 question heading into training camp -- the inexperienced and untested receiving corps -- still looms over the team after its lackluster performance in the preseason.

Steve Smith had a chance to silence that one on Saturday. He dropped it, literally, when the 80-yard bomb from quarterback Eli Manning slipped through his hands, reminding Giants fans of the bomb Domenik Hixon put on the same turf last December against the Eagles.

The receivers were probably the only ones happy to see the focus shifted somewhere else, even for just a day. The stir Umenyiora caused will fade to the background, too.

But if this defense struggles, the Giants can be sure they haven't heard the last of it.